Drew Silverstein ’16BUS is Writing Music With Robots, and Hollywood is Paying Attention

By Columbia Entrepreneurship | September 28, 2016

By Kif Lefswing, September 27, 2016

When an amateur filmmaker wants to soundtrack a video, they just pick one of their favorite songs and hope it doesn’t get zapped with a copyright takedown.

But for professional content, like the web videos from publications that are flooding Facebook, or for commercials, that’s not an option. You need music that sounds good, that’s appropriate for the video, and most importantly, is affordable to use legally.

That’s what Hollywood producers kept telling Drew Silverstein, ’16BUS, when he worked as a composer with Hollywood composers like Christopher Lennertz. Silverstein could write music, but having a human write music is a long and expensive process, which means it’s simply not practical for many uses.

He’s one of the founders of Amper Music, a startup writing software that writes music when given a few descriptors — “dark and epic,” or “happy classic rock.” [Rest of Story]